This application claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 89207906, filed on May 11, 2000.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a layout of slot pinholes on a circuit board. More particularly, the present invention relates to a slot pinhole dual layout on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) capable of mounting two kinds of different interface slots.
2. Description of Related Art
An ISA (Industrial Standard Architecture) slot is one kind of slot specification and has been used for years in personal computers. However, due to the fact that the access speed through an ISA interface is quite slow, it is becoming less common. Instead, PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots and other kinds of interface card slots are more popular. Since the overwhelming development of communication and multimedia products, a renovated CNR (Communication and Networking Riser) interface supporting functions such as audio, modem and LAN (Local Area Network) is gradually becoming indispensable. Though the quantity of PCI slots user requests is uncertain, the using of PCI slots still exists as a necessity in conventional extended equipment, which requires that the vendors of motherboards do a lot of research and development on manufacturing numerous different extension slots.
In other words, the quantity of extension slots used by consumers is not always the same; thus, the vendors of motherboards have to provide the motherboards with both PCI and CNR slots. Therefore, the vendors must develop at least two different products during research and store at least two different products in their stock. Hence, the amount of time consumed and the costs incurred during the research and development and the management of stored materials causes a lot of inconvenience.
FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of a commonly seen motherboard layout for extension slots in the present-day industry, wherein the motherboard 100 includes a six PCI slot pinhole layout 10axcx9c10f and one CNR slot pinhole layout 12a. FIG. 2 illustrates a portion of the motherboard layout with a five PCI slot pinhole layout 10axcx9c10e and a two CNR slot pinhole layout 12a, 12b. In order to meet market demands, the conventional method of manufacturing motherboards is to design two sets of motherboards with different quantities of PCI and CNR slots; since the proportion of motherboards using CNR slots is gradually increasing, the conventional design replaces the PCI slot 10f (and changes the placement of pinholes and circuits) with the CNR slots 12b as illustrated in FIG. 2. Therefore, there must be at least two lines of motherboard production for two different circuit placements.
From the above description, the disadvantages of slot pinhole layout on traditional circuit boards are listed as following:
1. Since the quantity and variety of slots on main boards is fixed, if the user needs to use at least two CNR slots, one must reconsider updating the motherboard, thus causing slow selling of the single CNR slot motherboards and increasing of the cost of storage.
2. Since the cost and time spent on developing transitional products are too much, it may be difficult for the products to enter the market.
The best solution to fit diverse requests on the quantity of slots on motherboards is to place every kind of slot onto the motherboards, and to be guided by the market-demand. If the demand for CNR increases, a PCI slot should be directly changed into a CNR slot under the principle wherein no circuit modification is required. However, since the size of a motherboard is fixed, and considering the problems of fitting the interface cards onto slots with the computer chassis, the space for placement of slots on a motherboard is really limited. Therefore, it would be impossible to unrestrictedly extend the size of a motherboard. One solution is to have two different kinds of slot pinhole layout and non-interfering circuits co-function on the same slot pinhole positions. When PCI or CNR slots require placement, the required pinhole layout is chosen, and the problems incurred in the course of RandD or during storage would naturally improve.
Accordingly, one object of the present invention is to choose either PCI or CNR slots based on market demands by having two different pinhole layouts co-functions at the same slot positions.
In order to achieve these and other objectives, a slot pinhole layout is provided according to a first preferred embodiment of the present invention. A first and second pinhole layout are included, wherein the first pinhole layout is formed of 4 pinhole rows including the first and the second pinhole rows. The second layout is formed of 4 pinhole rows, and therein includes the third and the fourth pinhole rows. The third and the fourth pinhole rows included in the second pinhole layout are moved a suitable distance and are staggered with the first and the second pinhole rows that are included in the first pinhole layout, and are placed on the same slot positions of the motherboard. The slot device can be chosen according to the market demand, and thus, can accelerate the development of diverse products, and increase product compatibility on the motherboard (including those in the mainstream and the transitional products) to lower the cost of stock as well as to promote the competitiveness of products.
For the reason of being better understood in the above description, objects, features and advantages of the present invention, a preferred embodiment will be provided in the following text and accompanying drawings will have a detailed description as well: